Leviathan's Blood Read Free

his mid-forties, Ja had more in common with his mother than with his daughter. She took after
her
mother, his wife, who had died a dozen years ago.
    ‘The wreckage of a ship has washed up on shore,’ she had said. ‘The crew had been nailed to parts of the ship: to the hull, to the deck, to the mast, to the chairs. Nothing had
been stolen: they wore their jewellery and their payrolls had been left intact. They were returning from Gogair—’
    ‘Some people,’ he said to her, ‘do not like slavers. They think their money is tainted.’
    ‘The deaths – they are
his
.’
    He told her that every wreckage, every lost ship, was attributed to Aela Ren. If it was not the man himself, it was
Glafanr
, his huge, stationary ship that had been moored on the coast
of Sooia for seven hundred years. She knew that, just as he did. She knew better than to repeat the stories she heard. He had been pleased when she had nodded, when she had agreed with him and had
promised not to repeat it in the village.
    The next morning, two young families, nine people in total, left the village. It was nine that he could not afford to lose, but he had not been surprised by who left. Both families had come down
to the coast, lured by the gold in his work, by the Fifth Queen’s financial support for what he did; but neither had believed in the task. They had not understood why the witches did not do
the work, why they did not work with the blood in the ocean, why they did not accelerate the process of breeding out the poison and disease in fish. He had told them the stories of what had
happened to the witches and warlocks who had tried just that, but he did not believe that they accepted what he said. They had never stopped asking him why it was necessary to breed the fish the
way they did, why they needed to breed both the large and the small, the dangerous and the sedate, and why all must have the poison of the ocean removed from their flesh.
    But they had not left because of the work.
    ‘It is him.’ The oldest of the women, Un Daleem, had been the one to tell him. A large, raw-boned woman with black skin, she wore a small dark stone around her neck like a blind
third eye. ‘Aela Ren. He is coming here, to the Fifth Province. To Ooila.’
    ‘You do not know that,’ he said.
    ‘I hear the stories.’
    ‘There are always stories.’
    ‘It is different this time.’
    Her gaze never left the empty black waves and the long lines of sunlight that ran towards the village like blades made from the morning’s sun.
    ‘I have never believed the rumours of his arrival,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Not before this. My mother told them to me the day I was born and every day until her death. Aela
Ren will come. The Innocent is coming. But I would tell her that Aela Ren has had his war on Sooia for seven hundred years. He will not leave that land. That is why no other country ever invaded.
Why no one has gone to help the poor people there. But now . . . now is different, Ja.
Glafanr
has been seen. More than one sailor, more than one ship – you have heard that as well
as I have. And now that wreckage washes up half a day’s ride from here? That was not the work of a raider, or a mercenary, or another country. That was him. That was the Innocent and his army
and Leviathan’s Blood has brought the dead crew as warning to us.’
    That had been a week ago, and he recalled Un Daleem’s words with a chill as he stood on the wet rocks, staring at
Glafanr
.
    It is not the Innocent’s ship
, he told himself.
Red sails are used by more than one ship on the black ocean. And besides
. . . besides, as he strained his fading
eyesight, he could not see movement on deck.
    The ship was abandoned, surely. It was derelict and nothing more.
    The words felt more like hope than truth, but he repeated them. Ships struck bad weather. Ships tore their sails. Ships broke their keel. Ships were abandoned for many reasons, and Ja Nuural ran
through the list